A skier or snowboarder exerts significant stresses on bindings. With snowboarding, for example, the binding must remain firmly secured to the board while the rider sets an edge, turns, jumps, lands, and so forth. Even under extreme stress a serious safety issue would arise should the binding be released from the board. In such an instance only one leg would be attached to the board with resultant excessive leverage to twist and injure an ankle or leg. The attachment structure for receiving fasteners within a snowboard must also be accurately placed since bindings include predefined spacing between fasteners. Furthermore, the attachment structure must not move or twist under stress when in a snowboard during snowboarding or attachment of the bindings.
Most present manufacturers employ threaded inserts within snowboards for binding attachment. The inserts are cylindrical with a threaded bore opening at the top and a flange at the bottom. The purpose of the flange is to stop the insert from being pulled from the board under the stresses placed on it by the binding. However the flange is small and round. Thus, the insert may still be torn from the board in some instances.
Furthermore, when the bindings are being installed a machine screw is tightly screwed into the inserts. The twisting forces of the screw may cause the insert to rotate within the board, especially if there are placement errors or imperfections on insert or screw threads that introduce additional resistance to turning the screw.
Accurate and precise placement of the inserts within the board may be challenging during snowboard manufacturing since each insert must be individually located correctly with respect to both the board and the other inserts. Inaccurate placement of the inserts will shift the required place of binding mounting to a non-optimum location or orientation. Imprecise placement will make securing binding fasteners within the inserts difficult since interference will result as the distances between the fasteners in some directions are predefined.
If the snowboard is to be constructed with an injection molded core, the placement issues discussed above may be compounded. The individual inserts must be placed between the top and bottom of the board before the foam is injected into the board. Nevertheless, the inserts must not move during all the assembling and injection steps.
Therefore, a method and apparatus for providing a secure, safe, and easily manufacturable binding attachment structure within a snowboard, ski, or the like is not provided by the prior art. The present invention addresses these issues to overcome the limitations currently encountered.